SLOAC

Student Learning Outcomes and Assessment Cycle (SLOAC) Project

The SLOAC Menu (nod to Counter Burger)

HOW TO BEGIN TO WRITE A SLOAC

If you’ve ever eaten at a Counter Burger you know that you can build a burger to your own specifications by making a series of choices. Choose the bun, choose the meat, choose the toppings, and choose a sauce. The power of choice indeed.

With the SLOAC design process, you have an equally interesting series of choices. Here’s the SLOAC Menu:

Choose 1- several outcome(s) for your course. Think of the most important concepts or skills you’d like one of your student to remember four years from now OR think of a pedagogical challenge you’d like to resolve in that course. Write your outcome around those ideas.
Choose a formative or summative assessment to measure the outcome. Do you want to shape student learning within the quarter (the former) or describe student success at the end of the quarter (the latter).
Choose assessments efficiently: Whatever your assessment goal, use assessment measures you already have embedded in the course—tests, rubrics, essays, projects, observation checklists, surveys, etc. The Classroom Assessment Techniques (CAT) work of Cross and Angelo provides effective and quick formative assessment ideas. Each division has a copy of that book.
Choose when, how and with whom you’ll reflect on the data you’ve gathered in the assessment cycle. Want to meet as a team, a department, or a group of colleagues? It’s your choice! Make the reflection meaningful to your goals then tell us not only what you thought about what you’ve learned but also if you’re prompted to change content, teaching method, assignments, assessments, or even the SLO as a result.

And that’s an SLO! Once written, then it’s filed in the Office of Instruction course management system and scheduled for the AC part of SLOAC, the assessment cycle that occurs on a rotating basis — think one-third of the courses in the catalog every quarter.

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